Renato Guttuso

“My first paintings are evidence of daily contact with the street.

I saw the ruins, the gravestones, ancient and modern symbols such as the Eagle, the Hammer and Sickle,

obelisks, statues, Roman She-wolves releasing enough energy to face the pictorial adventure"

Franco Angeli is a key figure of that new generation of Roman painters who developed at the dawn of the 1960s because, by experimenting with various techniques and materials in a search aimed at approaching abstract-material art, he was able to overcome the Informal. He was born in Rome on 14 May 1935 to a family of humble origins and for this reason, already at the age of nine he began working in a body shop and then in an upholstery shop where he had the opportunity to learn the use of fabrics, shapes and cutouts which he will report in his works. Angeli, despite not having attended regular art studies, began painting in 1957, the year in which he also left for military service in Orvieto. Once he returned to Rome he became acquainted with the works of Alberto Burri and appreciated his ability to use materials and forms. His is in fact a painting initially influenced by the material-gestural expressiveness of the Informal and then turning to monochrome  to the point of making the canvas similar to an almost neutral screen although animated by light signs, slight luminous vibrations and symbols that are barely legible in transparency. Through his very personal technique he is truly able to evoke the shapes and symbols of the past, bringing the practice of painting back to its figural appearances. The real turning point came in 1960 when he finally had the opportunity to inaugurate his first solo show at the Galleria La Salita with a series of works characterized by veils of oil paint and stretched nylon stockings, in short similar to memories experienced in a distant time.